RimWorld Early Access Review

Crash into the unknown of space and manage a colony of survivors, facing events such as thunderstorms and pirate raids! Manage your colonists moods, needs and health while you gather materials, build facilities, tame wild animals, research new technologies and much more in this complex and engaging sci-fi colony sim. Will you survive the dangers of space or will your colonists see their last days at your command?
RimWorld Review

Introduction

Rimworld is a sci-fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller. Inspired by Dwarf Fortress and Firefly. Generates stories by simulating psychology, ecology, gunplay, melee combat, climate, biomes, diplomacy, interpersonal relationships, art, medicine, trade, and more.
It is currently being developed by Ludeon Studios. It was initially released as alpha software for Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows on November 2013. On July 2016, the game was released as Alpha version 14 on Steam early access. On November 18, 2017, the game's beta software was released, as Beta version 18.
Rimworld's latest beta version is available for purchase on Steam for $29.99.

STORY

Rimworld is a story generator. It’s designed to co-author tragic, twisted, and triumphant stories about imprisoned pirates, desperate colonists, starvation and survival. It works by controlling the “random” events that the world throws at you. Every thunderstorm, pirate raid, and traveling salesman is a card dealt into your story by the AI Storyteller.
There are several storytellers to choose from. Randy Random does crazy stuff, Cassandra Classic goes for rising tension, and Phoebe Chillax likes to relax.

RimWorld Review. Randy Random, the crazy storyteller
That being said, since this story generator is just responsible for a series of random disconnected events, we cannot call this a real story, can we?

That is when things get interesting.

You begin with three survivors of a shipwreck on a distant world. That is how you are introduced to your initial situation. After that, the story basically revolves around you trying to survive these series of random events until you can acquire enough material and research to be able to lunch an escape spaceship to get back to wherever you came from in the first place.

Despite not having any line of thought, especially if you chose Randy Random as your storyteller, these events interact with you and your crew, influencing the decisions you take, the way you build and evolve your base and even the way you deal with your colonists. Deceptively, random event after random event, your story starts to build up. Its not a story of a hero and his quest, its not a elaborate and well written story, its a story of the life of your colony and colonists and how they keep surviving.
Each colonist that is created or introduced in each gameplay is unique regarding his set of skills, personality, injuries and desires – since the game simulates literally everything, even their relationships with each other, it gives the story an infinity of possible outcomes.
Add this to the series of animals / creatures you can encounter or tame, civilizations you can interact with, groups of bandits and pirates, natural disasters and spacial events and you can end up experiencing some crazy stories all together.

Just to give you an example, one time I was attacked by a group of pirates with shotguns. Luckily, my colonists managed to kill them all except for one shaman named Owl, which they made their prisoner. It was only when tending to the prisoner's wounds that they realized why they attacked – they were drunk. Turns out Owl was a alcohol addict (and the others too, I would assume) and was carrying a large amount of beers.

RimWorld Review. Owl, the Drunk Shaman in rehab
Since the capture, Owl went through a strict rehab program, which consisted in a closed cell with no access to any kind of alcohol. Later, he was convinced to join the colony. It turns out that Owl was a very good farmer and a real social guy. How about that for a story?

This example also goes to show that is easy for you to get attached to these colonists, which also contributes to giving more meaning to these events.
No, it is not a full fledged story built in the game, but its more real than most premade stories. You will relate to it, you will drive its outcomes and you will remember each game for his different and unique development.

GAMEPLAY

Since this is a sim game, its gameplay is not revolutionary. It revolves around managing the colonist by telling them what and how to do things and prioritizing their actions patterns. This sounds very simple and straightforward but when you have to manage food, animals, constructions, psychology, ecology, gunplay, melee combat, equipment, climate, biomes, diplomacy, interpersonal relationships, art, medicine, trade, and more, things tend to get complicated.

Regarding the building aspect of this sim, you have several options, but in the end every game has to have his core buildings and areas – you can define where do you store your goods and junk and what goes into each storage.

RimWorld Review. Star-shaped colony
Additionally, you can build walls, doors, temperature devices (like coolers for your pantry or heaters for your bedrooms). You can also build several different work stations that allows your colonists to cook, tailor, butcher and build a whole bunch of different items.

There is a whole tech tree to research that, despite the several option it possesses, feels very linear towards the final researches of the spaceship components. It is mostly meant to force you to prioritize, especially in the early stages of any colony, where your researches benches are more primitive and therefore take longer to progress through the techs.

You have the ability to toggle between 3 speeds of action – Normally the slower get things going in while you send your colonists to construct or gather something or even during combat, while the faster help you get through dead times, like night time or times were you are literal waiting for the new random events to trigger.

The only issue with gameplay is the lack of objectives and purpose.There is the final objective of building the escape spaceship, but until there you have no clear short-term challenge – sure, there are always new issues to attend, whether it is building new facilities or to attend to your colonists problems and necessities, but is is all sub-intended. Due to this lack of drive mechanism, sometimes it just feels you are speeding the game up to get to the next random events to see if it stirs things up, for a change.

GRAPHICS AND AUDIO

Regarding the audio, there is not much to say. There is one audiotrack that servers as the main soundtrack throughout the gameplay – catchy but not very attractive, it gets a bit tiring with time. All the audio effects as shooting and building are smooth and polished.

Graphic wise, I know what you are thinking: Rimworld looks a lot like Prison Architect, a game developed by Introversion Software studio.

RimWorld Review. Prison Architect vs Rimworld graphics
It turns out the developers were asked about the similarities since at the time both games were in beta development. The developer Tynan Sylvester's answer was:

"I drew some inspiration from PA. More so from its own inspiration, Dwarf Fortress.

But they do look somewhat similar; that's my fault. I'm not a good enough artist to come up with a really good original look. There are only so many ways to render characters on a tiny grid without using animations.

I hope the differences between the game will be enough for people to look past the aesthetic similarities. And if I get some funding at some point I can get an artist to help develop a more unique look.

I do think the similarities are skin-deep. In gameplay the game resembles DF much more than PA."

Its a legit answer and the truth is their are right: there are not a lot of good ways to develop good graphics is art is not your strong point and you are starting an indie game with no resources. And yes, the games are very different in gameplay and foundation so that they don't feel anything close to each other. Even so, it would be nice if Rimworld had an art more in tune with the game's theme.

CONCLUSION

Rimworld is a complex and cruel space simulator where tending to a group of surviving colonists never felt so close to owning a kindergarten. Food, health, infrastructures, cooking, cleaning, farming, hunting – you have to tie it all together for the colonists' survival. The only difference is that your kindergarten is constantly being attacked by pirates and wild space monsters or being ravaged by natural catastrophes. There is still a lot of room for future development – quests and reward system, special colonists, different environments or game modes – you name it, the game has potential.
PROS CONS
+ Complex and detailed simulator – No real long term objetive
+ Infinite amount of random events – No original art style
+ Good replayability – Random events are the only mechanism that drives the gameplay experience
+ Huge development potential
7.5
Good

1 Comment

  1. Avatar photo

    “No real long-term objective?” this was true in the very start. But now your goal is to build a spaceship and get out of there. It takes a very long time. But the biggest issue with Rimworld. Is that it is single core. Making the late game a bog.

    Reply

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